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People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. Welcome to From On High.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The Fine Print

To hear Interior Secretary Ken Salazar tell it, Obama's big on fossil fuel energy these days. And he tells it well. Only problem is with the facts. Those darn facts.

Read this carefully and you'll understand what I mean:

Salazar says critics live in ‘fairy tale’ land
By Ben Wolfgang, Washington Times

Interior Secretary Kenneth L. Salazar on Tuesday blasted the “world of fairy tales” that he thinks most Republicans and some oil and gas industry leaders live in, arguing that the Obama administration remains committed to domestic fossil fuels and any claims to the contrary are patently false.

“There is this imagined energy world, maybe a world of fairy tales, falsehoods, that we often see in Washington, D.C.,” he said during a speech at the National Press Club. “It’s a divide between the real energy world that we work on every day and the imagined fairy tale world. It’s a place where up is seen as down, where left is seen as right.” [link]

Scroll past all the Democrat bluster and you get the facts of the matter:

During his address, Mr. Salazar touted the fact that domestic oil production on federal lands is up 13 percent since Mr. Obama became president. Figures from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that assertion to be technically true, but Mr. Salazar left out the fact that the numbers are headed in the opposite direction. Oil production on government land since 2008 is up overall, but dropped 14 percent from 2010 to 2011.

He also omitted EIA numbers showing that since 2008, natural gas production on federal lands - directly controlled by the Interior Department - has dropped dramatically, including an 11 percent dip from 2010 to 2011.

Since 2009, total fossil fuel production on federally controlled land is down 7 percent, according to the EIA. [emphasis mine]

Oil (along with gas) production is up - since Bush left office. Because leases and permits were approved by him and previous Presidents. But from 2010 to today, what with Obama delaying new permitting and oil leases, production on federal lands is now on the decline.